Briar Rose
by nat rulz
Summary: When Shannon and Kelly died Jethro hid his heart away, encasing it with briars and lulling it into sleep. Many women tried to tear their way through the thorns with nothing to show for it but bleeding hands and broken hearts. Then there was Tony. G/T


**Title:** Briar Rose

**Pairing: **Tony DiNozzo/Jethro Gibbs

**Warnings: **Some poetic language, sexual scenes (het and slash), mild angst and heartbeark as well as character death (Shannon and Kelly).

**Spoilers:** None for NCIS, but a few for Sleeping Beauty. ^^

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the show or the fairytale. If I did I'd be very rich and not writing fanfiction.

**Summary: **When Shannon and Kelly died Jethro hid his heart away from the world, encasing it with briars and lulling it into a quiet sleep. Many women tried to tear their way through the thorns with nothing to show for it but bleeding hands and broken hearts. Then there was Tony.

**Authors Note: **This is written like a fairytale and is inspired by the tale 'Sleeping Beauty'. This is the first such story inspired by an old fairytale, the next of which is currently 34, 000 words (and counting) but is not yet finished.

_Where is the spindle?  
__Where is the blood?  
__Where is the magic  
__That comes in a flood?  
__Where are the enchantments?  
__Where are the songs?  
__Where are the villains  
__Committing their wrongs?  
__Where's the happy ending?  
__Where's the lovers kiss?  
__Where's the midnight curfew?  
__The happy wedded bliss?  
__Where's the coy narrator  
__Who tells us what transpires?  
__I wanted gleaming castle gates  
__But all I got were briars._

**Briar Rose**

Once upon a time, there was a princess.

This is probably true. It's fairly certain that, at some point, there was a fair young maiden who endured something horrible and was rescued by a handsome prince –a man who stole her heart and swept her away into the sunset.

But this isn't her story.

Instead, this is a story of a family.

There's nothing particularly unique about them –nothing that really sets them apart from any other. In the global sense of things, they're really no more or less important than any other family.

Nonetheless, without them the story in question would not exist.

So, let's try this again.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl. Her name was Kelly.

Kelly was an ordinary child in an ordinary neighbourhood with ordinary parents who loved her more than life herself. Though generally a very well-behaved little girl, Kelly had a streak of mischief in her heart that her parents each insisted she inherited from the other.

Fiery and vivacious, Kelly couldn't sing to save her life but could dance as lightly as a falling leaf. She didn't yet know what she wanted to be when she grew up and fluctuated daily, sometimes taking up a mock first aid kit and rescuing injured animals and other times planning elaborate bank robberies from under her bed.

Young Kelly was full of life and laughter and light.

But really, this isn't her story either.

Her story ended when she was seven years old, before it ever really began.

And so did Shannon's.

But we're not beginning her story right, are we? Everyone knows how a story begins and we're bound by the laws that govern those clichés.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Shannon.

When Shannon was six years old, all she wanted was to sew.

She'd curl her fingers into the very edges of her mother's dress, all but burying herself in the fabric, and watch as her mother pinned and measured and created. To a six year old girl, as impressionable as she was stubborn, it was like watching the creation of life itself.

At eleven, she made her first dress. It was blue, long and fringed with lace. It took Shannon so long to make that, by the time she finished it, all her measurements were outdated and it no longer fit her. She'd hung it in her wardrobe anyway.

It was the first of many.

By the time she was sixteen, she was making as many items of clothing as she possibly could. Completed works were displayed and sold with a fierce sense of pride and every time Shannon saw someone in town wearing one of her creations it served to make her feel ten feet tall. Happy with her job, her passion, her life, she simply couldn't imagine there could ever be anything better than this.

Then she met Jethro.

And everything changed.

She wasn't entirely sure how it happened. All she knew was that seeing Jethro smile filled her with a sense of pride she'd only ever associated with putting the finishing touches on a dress she'd spent months creating. His kiss was akin to trying that same dress on and knowing for the first time what it felt like against her skin.

And when they finally took that final step and Jethro slide inside her for the first time, looking down on her like she was more precious than any fabric and knowing her in a way no one had ever known her, it was like nothing she had ever experienced.

Loving him was as easy as breathing, as free as running water and as close to touching perfection as Shannon had ever known. It was as though their very hearts called to each other, as if they sang in a harmony so complimentary that they sounded as one.

But the Marines called louder.

All it had taken was one fight too many with Jack, one more argument with a local rival, one last straw on the camel's back before Jethro was packing his bags, kissing Shannon goodbye and boarding a train out of Stillwater and into danger.

Shannon cried for days, half convinced he'd never return. She didn't so much as look at a needle the whole time, her passion seeming a hollow thing indeed without someone to wear the clothes for.

Then the letters started.

As well as reminding Shannon that her love hadn't deserted her, they gave her something besides the fierce ache inside her to focus on. Not accustomed to writing letters, the correspondence between them was strained and awkward at first, becoming more personal as the lovers gained confidence. Soon, they were writing almost every day and it wasn't long before exchanges of everlasting love were made and plans for a future together were being pieced together.

When Jethro returned it was with a ring so old it had to be his mothers and a question so simple it required no thought at all.

Shannon donning a white veil marked the day that should have been the happy ending for all involved. Dressed entirely in white, proceeding step by step down the aisle with a hundred pair of eyes watching her walk and only one pair of eyes mattering a whit, she more than looked the part. Exchanging vowels and rings with the man her mind, heart and body knew to be her soul mate, swearing forever to belong only to the other –it should have been enough to safeguard them from any sort of tragedy.

But it wasn't.

Instead, they had nine blissful years together. Nine years of making love, fighting furiously, laughing and crying and being jealous and reassuring and kind and cruel and happy and sad and alive and together.

Seven of those years which were spent with a little girl as perfect as any little girl could be. They were human and flawed and they fought –about Jethro's continuous absences, about Shannon's work, about money, about how to raise their child. But their love always overshadowed anything else and though it wasn't ever easy, their life together was never a chore and Shannon was happy.

Then one day, she naively stumbled into an alley and witnessed a man being shot through the heart.

Serving as the beginning of the end, the witness protection was merely a prelude to something no mortal had a hope of preventing. For what consolation it provided her friends and family, her death had been quick and painless. There was a gunshot, the loss of control of the car, the terrifying ride as it spun out of control and an explosion so hot that it killed her instantly.

And all that remained was the battered heart of Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

This is his story.

It's the story of a man who lost everything he'd ever held dear. A man who awoke from his mission on Desert Storm without a wife or child to return to. A man who held a gun to his own head and hesitated, finding fewer and fewer reasons to stop his finger from pulling the trigger.

A man who turned, for a lack of anything in the world to turn to, to revenge.

Jethro couldn't live without his family and he didn't even try. Instead, he shot the man who had robbed him of his family and he hid himself away from the world.

Rather than risk his heart again, Jethro walled it off. Unbreakable, he lined the buttresses with brambles so thick no mortal woman could breach them unscathed. He twined them around and around his heart, hiding it away deep inside where he lulled it into a sleep so deep it would never wake again. And this was the image he presented to the world: aloof, untouchable, a heartless bastard.

Charlotte was the first woman who tried fighting her way through. She thought she glimpsed something beneath a grief so palpable it was heartbreaking. So she touched Jethro's skin with warm hands, pressed her lips against his own, opened her body to his. She tried gently coaxing him out of his long silences, to make him laugh, to guide him back into the world which was full of a light Jethro refused to see.

Jethro smiled and nodded and kissed her back all without feeling a thing. Her body was warmth and Jethro had long forgotten what that was, so though his briars remained as thick as ever, he allowed himself to be led through their courtship and their love –even, in the end, down an aisle.

But their marriage ended the first time Charlotte hinted at children.

She left only after hitting the man over the head with a nine iron, broken-hearted and frustrated, already pitting the next woman who tried to get through to Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

The next woman's name was Diane.

The brambles were thicker now, tipped with sarcasm and silence and sawdust. Though she looked something like Shannon with her blue eyes and long red hair, this only made Gibbs build his walls higher still, determined not to let her in even as they kissed and talked and made love.

To her credit, Diane fought. She struggled valiantly to get through Jethro's many defences, wanting desperately to be the one to finally make her way through and awaken his sleeping heart.

When she admitted to failure less than a year later, she left without looking back, making sure to first hurt him as he had hurt her and to take as much of his money as she could get her hands on.

The next to try was Stephanie.

Having met Jethro through a case, she had the advantage of knowing firsthand just how good a man she was. Out of all of Jethro's wives, she had him married to her the quickest and spent less time trying to coax him out of his shell than she did pretending nothing was wrong.

It was a pleasant charade and it actually worked for a while. Stephanie had even herself convinced that they were happy. That she didn't mind the long hours Jethro worked, or how he holed himself away in the basement, or the way his eyes were never quite there when they made love. Convinced that he loved her as much as she loved him.

Theirs was not a sudden breakdown –it was a gradual one. It was as if every little thing combined slowly over time so that one day Stephanie nicked herself with a knife making dinner and found herself crumpled on the ground sobbing over the wound as though it was life-threatening.

Jethro found her that way over an hour later and when he didn't immediately rush to her side Stephanie bowed her head and let the tears come as they willed.

"Did you ever love me at all?"

Jethro never answered her but his silence was answer enough. Methodically, Stephanie packed up her things and left. She was the first wife to demand nothing of him as she did so and didn't so much as curse his name as she erased her presence from his house.

It was her quiet grief, her acceptance, that made the many thorns surrounding Jethro's heart twitch uneasily and it was then, watching her leave, that Jethro swore he was done with marriage.

He still dated, still allowed women to pursue him, but anytime it got anything approaching serious Jethro would back off, distance himself, surround himself with thorns and pitfalls until even the most stubborn of women gave up and left.

Jethro couldn't bring himself to care –he had his boat, his job and his team. He wasn't happy but he was as close to being content as he was capable of being with a heart that had been sleeping for over a decade.

So that was his life and for a very long time, the briars remained undisturbed growing wild around his heart with no one daring to fight their way through –with no one caring enough to try.

Then Anthony "Call me Tony" DiNozzo breezed into his life.

The first time Tony smiled his way, all teeth and large eyes and dishevelled hair, the thorns around Jethro's heart shifted, pegging this man instantly as a threat.

But unlike all those determined women, Tony didn't chase him and didn't fight his way through the thorns surrounding Jethro. He didn't even seem inclined to try and, after working together two years without this changing, Jethro began to relax.

The first time he found Tony perched silently on the steps to his basement, that peace went right out the window.

But Tony never spoke, never intruded any further down that the fifth last step and never seemed to expect Jethro to do anything at all about his presence. Instead, and rather uncharacteristically, Tony seemed to expect nothing at all from him, merely content to sit and watch as the skeleton of wood beneath Jethro's fingers became a boat.

Jethro began to expect him, began lining Tony's Step with a towel and bringing down an extra glass or bottle of beer.

When Tony missed a day, Jethro spent hours driven to distraction by the empty staircase, jumping expectantly at every creak that sounded and talking himself in and out of calling Tony a dozen times every hour.

When he returned the next day as though he hadn't worried Jethro silly, Jethro was filled with an anger that wasn't entirely righteous.

"Where were you?"

The words were out before Jethro could pull them back. Tony knew him well enough to know that his calm tone meant trouble but, to his credit, he didn't so much as flinch.

"I had a funeral to attend," Tony answered, leaning against the banister and watching Jethro with eyes as soft as midnight, "His name was Jason and he was my friend."

Jethro relaxed slightly, telling himself that he wasn't at all effected by how lost Tony looked, how small.

"Tell me about him."

And Tony did. He spoke softly but continuously, somehow working his voice into a tempo that complimented Jethro's woodwork so that the two sounds became a harmony.

This became their new routine. Tony would sit on the steps and talk (about the weather, his day, work –nothing was off limits and Tony covered everything from parties to fond memories of his childhood) and Jethro would work. Though much of it was idle and meaningless, every word Tony said was stored safely away, every titbit of his childhood carefully remembered. At first Jethro would answer only if Tony addressed him directly but as time passed he found that they were turning from monologues into conversations.

Jethro learned that Tony's favourite colour was blue, that he'd once wanted to play professional ball and that his father was a bastard. He learned his habits, the sound of his footsteps against wood, his fears and triumphs and sorrows.

The briars around his heart remained sharp and on the alert, finding such knowledge dangerous territory. But Tony never asked for more, never pushed, never fought his way through them. Never proceeded any further than the fifth-last step.

Jethro pushed him anyway, prodding and snarling and lashing out at him fiercely. But Tony merely smiled and joked and laughed him off and though Jethro sometimes saw the hurt in his eyes, Tony never said a harsh word and always came back the very next day, laying himself open to Jethro's criticism, allowing the thorns to scratch him without lifting so much as a hand to beat them back.

"I don't know what you want," Jethro admitted quietly as Tony settled himself on his step as though Jethro hadn't screamed him out the day before, "What do you want? I don't understand."

But Tony merely smiled, leant against the banister and shook his head.

"You can't understand," he corrected, almost gently. Seeing Jethro's confusion he grinned a little wryly and added, "It's because you're not asking the right questions."

Jethro didn't know what that meant but, more importantly, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. So instead, he turned back to his boat and set back to work, relaxing almost imperceptivity when Tony began to talk.

A year passed without this routine changing at all. Then, one day, Tony got to the steps before Jethro got to the boat. As he passed the younger man, already making himself comfortable, Jethro's hand reached out and brushed along Tony's shoulder's as he went by.

After that, Tony seemed to find any excuse to touch him.

Most of those excuses cropped up at work where the contact could be dismissed as accidental. All of it was harmless –a bump of shoulders, a lingering touch as Tony handed him a file or a cup of coffee, a brief brush of legs under tables. It was never anything sexual, never anything overt, never anything Jethro could identify as flirting. The brambles had him shying back half the time anyway but the other half of the time he found himself returning the chaste touches. He did it awkwardly, sporadically, sometimes abruptly. Tony was getting more headslaps than all the other team members combined but his smile was as bright as sunshine.

Part of him returned the touches because he missed warmth and the touches provided it. Mostly, though, it was because he was curious. Despite the physical contact Tony still refused to demand anything from him and still spent every evening curled up on his step and using his voice as to counterpoint Jethro's sanding.

It drove Jethro mad –he wanted to pin Tony down and demand to know what he was getting out of this, what it was he wanted. He knew what Tony would say, though, knew he'd simply smile and tell him he still wasn't asking the right questions. The problem being that Jethro didn't know what the right question was and, even if he did, was too afraid of the answer to ask it.

Another year passed with nothing further developing. The touches continued but were kept light and casual, a source of continuous warmth to Jethro that demanded nothing from him. Eventually Jethro got sick of not knowing and drew Tony away from the basement and into the family room where he sat him down on the couch and tried to suss out his intentions.

Instead, Tony put on a movie and curled into Jethro's side to watch it, refusing to acknowledge the questions Jethro was all but screaming.

"Why?" Jethro had to ask as the final credits rolled and he occupied himself with playing with Tony's hair.

"You're still not ready," Tony disputed calmly, leaning into the touch and looking up at Jethro with eyes that were far too green. "Soon though."

Jethro huffed, pulling his hand away and letting Tony leave.

That night, he'd dreamed that Tony had never left –that they'd gone to bed together and had curled around each other in an act that was as devoid of sex as it was intimate. He woke with a slight smile on his face and a hard-on between his legs.

And, all of a sudden, he knew the answer.

When Tony came the next day Jethro watched him settle on the step, feeling more confused than ever.

"I figured out the answer to my question," he informed Tony, frowning as Tony tilted his head in question, "I know what you want."

"Did it do you any good?" Tony wondered, already knowing the answer.

"No," Jethro replied reluctantly, "You were right. I was asking the wrong questions. You really don't want anything, do you?"

"No," Tony agreed, "Not a thing. Do you know the right question now?"

"Yes," Jethro admitted, meeting Tony's eyes head on.

"Are you going to ask it?"

Jethro shrugged, "I already know the answer."

"You suspect," Tony corrected gently, "When you're ready to ask, you'll be ready to know."

He stood and retreated a step but Jethro surged forward, reaching out to grab his wrist. Tony didn't resist, didn't push –he merely stood and waited patiently, just like he had been for years. Years of sitting on Jethro's steps, of casual touches and gentle conversation. Years of watching his six and making him smile. Years of gentle companionship that was given freely without expecting anything in return; a selfless generosity that accumulated into one question: a question Jethro was finally ready to ask.

"Why are you still here?"

And Tony smiled brilliantly and looked directly into Jethro's eyes, allowing him to see the fear and self-doubt and truth that were on display there.

"Because I love you."

He said it like it was nothing, as though he were commenting on the weather. He was such a body of contradictions, this man –all confidence and unease and insecurities and hope.

"It's alright," Tony assured him when Jethro said nothing in reply, merely staring back blankly, "I'm not expecting an answer. Or reciprocation."

"Then why say anything at all?" Jethro wondered, "Why put yourself through that?"

"It's true regardless, telling you makes no difference," Tony shrugged, "You've hidden yourself away Jethro. Tearing down those walls would be futile and I won't waste both our time. The only one who can breach them is you and your either ready for that or you're not. In the end, I can't force you into loving me back."

It occurred to Jethro then that every progressive step made in their relationship had been made by him. It had been he who had started up the conversations, he who had began the casual contact, he who had dared to ask the question he'd already known the answer to. Tony had been letting him lead the way, following on his six as always and trusting Jethro not to lead him into a chasm.

Still holding on to Tony's wrist, Jethro raised his free hand and pulled Tony into a kiss.

The thorns didn't collapse or fade or crumble. Rather, they bowed aside, drawing Tony in with a gentleness that was foreign to them. After so long sleeping, Jethro's heart was slow to stir, flexing against the briars that loosened their embrace into one that was protective rather than threatening.

It overwhelmed him, causing Jethro to surge forward. Although in his arms, he was struck by the irrational fear that Tony would leave him and the very idea sent a thread of pure agony down his spine.

Tony accepted his desperation, his pain, his anguish –he opened himself wide to it, allowing the briars to twine around him without fighting them, without attempting to gentle them. Instead, he arched into Jethro's hold, sighed softly under his kisses and, when the time came, drew Jethro into his body with hardly a murmur.

Jethro's eyes were blue and stark and panicked looking into his, but Tony yielded beneath him, parted his lips to his kisses and gave Jethro everything he was without hesitation. The surrender of self was so complete that it calmed the storm within Jethro at once and what had began as a furious need to take and claim and mark morphed into a need to cherish and love and worship.

"It's alright," Tony sighed, over and over again, "It's alright. I'm right here. Not going anywhere Jethro. Not ever."

Jethro clung to him like he was driftwood in a storm and drank the reassurances in. Some distant part of him observed he was crying but he couldn't find the energy to care –not with Tony squirming beautifully beneath him. This wonderful, caring, determined man who Jethro was never letting go, never going to allow to come to harm.

He took a breath, terrified and awake and filled with an anguish so lovely it tore him up inside. Then he was coming, burying himself inside Tony and crying his release even as the other man shuddered and trembled beneath him.

"I love you," Jethro whispered as they lay there panting, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

"It's alright," Tony promised, hearing the despair in Jethro's voice and running a hand soothingly down his back while encasing Jethro with his body, "It's going to be alright. We'll figure this out."

Jethro buried his head into Tony's shoulder, laying a kiss there and struggling to pull himself together. He wasn't sure Tony was right –there were too many uncertainties in this life, something Jethro knew all too well.

But his mighty fortress wasn't holding the world out anymore, wasn't lashing out against Tony in protective anger. Was, instead, urging him to pull Tony somewhere deep inside where he'd remain safe and happy forever. How was this even possible? How had Tony managed to creep through the briars encasing his heart without him noticing?

"Jethro," Tony sighed, calling him by his name for only the second time, "Please?"

Jethro breathed Tony in, running one hand through Tony's hair and another down his side. Tony allowed it, eyes bright and filled with a trust so complete that there was no shattering it.

"I'll try," Jethro said at last, not able to deny this man anything, even his soul, "I'll try,"

And for Tony, that was enough.

This is the story about a man so encased in thorns that he forgot what it was to live. A man as broken as he was brave and just as determined to never love again. It's also the story of Tony, a man who eased his way in not by force but with patience and love, giving everything of himself and expecting nothing in return. A man who didn't try to cut the briars and instead accepted them as a part of the man he loved.

This is the story of Jethro and Tony, two men who made love, fought furiously, laughed and cried and were jealous and reassuring and kind and cruel and happy and sad and alive and together.

Two men who worked and played and had the other's six and who didn't live happily ever after but who lived happily and together for as long as they both lived.

_***~*~*~The End~*~*~***_

**A/N:** I've never written anything like this before so praise and cookies would be much appreciated. Hope you all enjoyed.


End file.
